It’s not often that a writer has an essay collection and a debut novel come out in the space of a few months, but that’s exactly the situation of Year in Reading alumRoxane Gay, whose novel An Untamed State and collection Bad Feminist are both getting published this year. At Bookforum, Margaret WepplerreadsAn Untamed State, which displays, she writes, “a staggering sense of strength, confidence and integrity."

“For Groff, it is not that there’s a clearly delineated line between the universal and the particular, but rather that they are nested like Russian dolls: every story of the particular is also an iteration of the universal.” This review of Lauren Groff’sFates and Furies from 3:AM Magazine is great. Our interview with Groff from a few weeks ago makes a nice complementary read.